Strategies to convert hospital beds for COVID-19 patients to minimize emergency department overcrowding.
Health Serv Manage Res
; : 9514848231218648, 2023 Dec 07.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38059353
ABSTRACT
Background:
The shortage of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients has been one critical cause of Emergency Department (ED) overcrowding.Purpose:
We aimed at elaborating a strategy of conversion of hospital beds, from non-COVID-19 to COVID-19 care, minimizing both ED overcrowding and the number of beds eventually converted. ResearchDesign:
Observational retrospective study. Study Sample We considered the centralized database of all ED admissions in the Lombardy region of Italy during the second "COVID-19 wave" (October to December 2020). Data collection andAnalysis:
We analyzed all admissions to 82 EDs. We devised a family of Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate the performance of hospital beds' conversion strategies triggered by ED crowding of COVID-19 patients, determining a critical number of beds to be converted when passing an ED-specific crowding threshold.Results:
Our results suggest that the maximum number of patients waiting for hospitalization could have been decreased by 70% with the proposed strategy. Such a reduction would have been achieved by converting 30% more hospital beds than the total number converted in the region.Conclusions:
The disproportion between reduction in ED crowding and additionally converted beds suggests that a wide margin to improve the efficiency of the conversions exists. The proposed simulation apparatus can be easily generalized to study management policies synchronizing ED output and in-hospital bed availability.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Health Serv Manage Res
Assunto da revista:
PESQUISA EM SERVICOS DE SAUDE
/
SERVICOS DE SAUDE
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Itália